i hope you like avocados.

because we sure do. whenever people come over, i like to put something delicious out to snack on.



My reasoning is twofold.
a) it's just what a good hostess does.
b) our friends like to drink. it's a good idea to eat if you're drinking.

mmmmmmm....



My favorite thing to make is guacamole because it is DELICIOUS and everyone loves it, everyone can eat it (vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, etc) and just one avocado makes enough for about 4 people.

All you do is slice up the avocado, squeeze some (I like a healthy dose) of lemon or lime juice (or both) all over the buttery green deliciousness. Dump some salsa on top (go easy, you can always add more at the end. At this stage less is more.)



Now, take your fork, and go bananas! MASH MASH MASH MASH!



Taste, and enjoy! Eat it on chips, celery sticks, or by the spoonful when no one is looking.

Then tell your boyfriend to stop taking pictures of you because it's making you BONKERS and party the night away!

Update!

Well, here is the as-promised update! I have successfully given up carbs of all sorts for (as of tomorrow) an ENTIRE WEEK! I'm pretty proud, and it hasn't really been that hard, if you can believe that.

That said, I am not going to do the whole 2 weeks. I feel like I got what I wanted, which is a resetting of the old bodily workings. I feel good in my body again, dropped a few poundages, and I'm going to continue to avoid the old carb family of foods, but I'm going to allow delicious alcoholic bevvies back into my life. It's going to be hot this weekend, I plan to do some park-sitting/picnicing with pink prosecco, and no goofy diet stuff is going to stop me!

Basically, I feel like this week has re-aligned all my insides, and my relationship with food and eating, therefore it was a great success! It forced mindfulness, which I used to be a master of, but lately had been slacking.

Anyway, enough of this. Less regime, more hedonism!

Confession.

I have gained 8lbs. 10 since my perfect happy place, and 8 since we moved out here. Confirmed today by my trusty new scale.

Ugh. What's a girl to do? Obviously, this cannot be tolerated. So, I thought I'd use you, dear reader, as a sounding board and check-system. I'm no-carbing it(sort of phase one of South Beach), and your job is to keep me honest. I'm not really too worried about it. I like and eat a lot of vegetables anyway, and dessert isn't ever very tempting. Plus, you can still eat good things like CHEESE when low-carbing it up, so that's something. Honestly, and I realize this might ring the alarm bells for some, the hardest thing to give up is drinks.

We don't drink at home much, not regularly anyway, but when we meet friends, it's usually for drinks at the super awesome pub down the street which I love with passion. And though I can still join David and co. there, I will be the weirdo drinking soda water. That's going to be sort of a pain. But small sacrifice for having my body back, and I've been missing it for a few months now.

What's odd is I really don't know how I gained the weight, it just sort of happened. Regardless, I know for a fact that low-carbing it works, and so I am going to stick to it! I'm in CRAZY intense summer classes for the next couple weeks, so its not like I was going to have that much fun anyway...

Well, you didn't really need to know all that, but I thought maybe writing it for all the world to see might make me stick to this for the whole 2 weeks that I hope to. So thanks. I'll still write about fun stuff and food etc. - maybe more than before! Or not...

I considered this regime, but ultimately decided it sounded a little dicey and with this 8lbs and bikini season looming, I couldn't afford to mess around.

AnthBo

I have owned the Les Halles cookbook since the day it came out. Have I ever once cooked something out of it? No.

Until tonight! After a long day of hard reading (Bourdieu anyone? UGH. But sort of in a good, brain-massaging way. Sort of. I digress. Finals, sorry) I came home, mentally exhausted. But my body was restless.

Moments like these are just made for a good cooking project, and as it happened there lurked in my kitchen 3 open, but barely touched, bottles of red wine. Clearly, this called for Boeuf Bourguignon! And not just any would do, oh no! I wanted to slave away for a while, I wanted exhaustion, anticipation, heat, slicing and searing, maillard reactions!

Clearly a job for my love, the guru, the self-effacing stud-muffiniest : Anthony Bourdian and his fabulous Les Halles cookbook. Most of the recipes in this book call for things that I will likely never go buy, like pigs blood. This one, however, is blessedly simple.

2lbs beef (I bought stewing beef, he calls for shoulder)
6 carrots, chopped in 1 inch pieces
4 onions ( I used 3, it was plenty)sliced thinly
1 bouquet garni
salt and pepper
1 cup decent red wine
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons flour

1. Get all your ducks in a row. Get the olive oil heating up, almost smoking.



2. MEAT. People like meat. Put salt and pepper on it.



3. Brown the meat. Don't grey it, get it good and maillard-y.



4. Take all the meat out. Drool at it for a sec.



5. Dump the onions into the meaty residue. Let them cook. 15ish minutes. After 10, add a little flour. This will smell very good.



6. Add the wine to deglaze the pan. Bring it to a boil, and simmer briefly.



Are your carrots and bouquet garni ready yet?



7. Add everything to the pan.



8. Add enough water to cover it all. Bring to a boil and then simmer, stirring occasionally, for at least 2 hours.

9. Serve. He says it's better the next day, so tomorrow night we're going to eat it with baguette and wine and cheese and salad and friends! You should too! Mmmmm.




10. Make like me and have a night of it! Put on some Bruce Springsteen and Bangles goodness, and your favorite cute apron, pour yourself a glass of wine and get cooking! AnthBo would.



Minus the apron maybe.

Cooooooookies!

I am particularly proud of these cookies. I spend a lot of time messing around with recipes trying to make them healthier, and while it's not always a disaster, the results often leave me wishing I'd just left well enough alone. Any doubters just ask David to recount the now infamous Whole Milk Will Probably Work Just As Well As Heavy Cream Carbonara Incident...ahem. Lesson learned.

Well, mostly. When it comes to baked goods, I learned from my mom that lots of times cookies, breads and muffins take well to healthification. This recipe started out as a Martha Stewart Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Banana Walnut cookie (that's a mouthful). It being Martha, of course, it was chock full of butter and white sugar. With all that otherwise good for you stuff in them, I could just feel the little darlings begging me to tweak them.

First, I always like to replace butter with oil- it usually works just fine and makes the cookies stay moist longer. Easy enough. Then, I decided to substitute honey for the sugar. Actually, I was out of sugar, and had honey, plus, honey is much healthier. But, another neato bonus of using honey is that because it has a more intense sweetness than sugar, you can use less.The recipe originally called for 1 cup of sugar. I got away with 1/2 a cup of honey! Call me crazy, but this stuff really gets me going.

A little googling taught me that to compensate for its liquidity, though, you're supposed to lessen other liquid-y things in recipes when you sub it for sugar. Fingers crossed, I reduced the fat (butter in Martha's case, oil in mine) by half.

And guess what?! It WORKED! These are some killer cookies, if I do say so. Chewy, nutty, wholesome, but super satisfying. And they're not really so bad for you, so you can get away with eating them for breakfast, and cookies for breakfast is never a bad thing.





Martha Miranda Cookies

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup mashed ripe banana (about 1 large)
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped into 1/4-inch chunks
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (about 2 ounces), toasted

Mix the oil and honey.
Add the egg and vanilla and mix well.
Mash in the banana.
Add the flour, baking soda and salt.
Add the oats, chocolate, and nuts. Stir.
Bake at 375 for about 10 minutes.

....in progress...

Sorry I've been away so long! Grad school is really great except for this thing called finals, which are partially to blame for my prolonged absence. That and doubling the size of our household and befriending famous people, but more on that later when I make a real post (which really is in progress. picture issues, but it's on the way, cross my heart).

But in the meantime I just had to post and let you know that this is really worth your while. What food is really about.

All American Monday.

Oh Yes.

Grilled turkey and cheddar (confession: grilled in olive oil, I can't bring myself to use butter on a Monday night, no matter how kitschy the food gets)



Oh Heck Yes. David and I might be together largely because of our shared love of that glorious thing known as The Deli Salads: both mac and the 'tater variety.



Now we're watching Californication and eating Cheetos. TV, Deli Salads, Frito Lay, and Grilled Cheese. Freedom! Liberty! The American way.

Completely Obsessed

So this is nothing that I've ever done, but I have a new obsession;



Stupid 10 page paper! If it weren't for you, I could've spent my day on that glorious green monster and really ACCOMPLISHED something! Sheesh.

That is all. I just had to share my adoration. Oh, and this one is cool too;



Special thanks to SeriousEats.com. Are we inspired yet?

Oh Ina.....

You always know best. I haven't cooked--really cooked-- in so so long. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I love nothing more than a nice meal out, but I can't remember the last time we ate a good, home cooked dinner. Literally can't remember. I've had the itch to cook for a while, but I woke up this morning and decided right away what my reward for putting in a little bit of coffee shop study time-- a little much needed late afternoon kitchen therapy courtesy of Ina Garten.

You know how actors when actors talk about things they admire about their colleagues they're always saying how "generous" so and so is? Well that's what I love about Ina, her food is generous--comforting, abundant, inviting. It makes me want to call up all my friends and tell them to get it while it's hot. And that's surely what dinner is all about.

The recipe is, like all her recipes, at once completely simple, and completely luxurious. It starts like this, with 1lb of mushrooms...



Cook them up... little butter, a little sherry...



Roux-it up, whisk in some milk, and then throw in 12oz of Gruyere and 8oz of cheddar, all the mushrooms and a pound of cavatappi (or macaroni, but that's just not as fun).



Give it a stir and...



into a pan!



Bake it up and enjoy the way your house smells...swell with pride when you get it out of the oven!



EAT. Mmmmmmmmmm...

For my Mom. and then also for David.

I woke up today with a craving that went a little something like this....




so I got my hands on some of these...



and mixed them up in some of this.



And that made me miss my mom, because she is the Cranberry Queen.

So I made the cookies, and thought of her.



But she's not here. So David ate them.



Which is ok, because it's his BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!!!!!! So instead of homesick cookies, they became birthday cookies, a beautiful thing!